d pointed out (for she was a great genealogist) their
connexion with existing families."[1] Sir Walter records many
evidences of the tenderness of his mother's nature, and he returned
warmly her affection for himself. His executors, in lifting up his
desk, the evening after his burial, found "arranged in careful order a
series of little objects, which had obviously been so placed there
that his eye might rest on them every morning before he began his
tasks. These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his
mother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her
dressing-room,--the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate had
bought for her with his first five-guinea fee,--a row of small packets
inscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her
offspring that had died before her,--his father's snuff-box, and
etui-case,--and more things of the like sort."[2] A story,
characteristic of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr. Lockhart
which will serve better than anything I can remember to bring the
father and mother of Scott vividly before the imagination. His father,
like Mr. Alexander Fairford, in _Redgauntlet_, though himself a strong
Hanoverian, inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from his
grandfather Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as he
neutrally expressed it, "out in '45," to ignore as much as possible
any phrases offensive to the Jacobites. For instance, he always called
Charles Edward not _the Pretender_ but _the Chevalier_,--and he did
business for many Jacobites:--

"Mrs. Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one autumn by the regular
appearance at a certain hour every evening of a sedan chair, to
deposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately
ushered into her husband's private room, and commonly remained with
him there until long after the usual bed-time of this orderly family.
Mr. Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness that
irritated the lady's feelings more and more; until at last she could
bear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bell
ring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made her
appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand,
observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be
better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some
for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished
appearance, and richly dress